PROBE INTO '81 POPE ATTACK SHORT OF FUNDS

An American-Bulgarian probe into the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 "has virtually ground to a halt," according to the American historian in charge of the project.

So far, said Allen Weinstein, there have been no "startling revelations" of Bulgarian involvement in the assassination attempt. But Weinstein, president of The Center for Democracy in Washington, added that most of the work remains to be done.

"It's a question of funds," he said three years after he announced in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, that the Bulgarian government had given him its files on the case.

The country's post-Communist government handed over the files in an attempt to settle, once and for all, whether the previous regime helped organize the attempt on the pope's life in Rome on May 13, 1981.

Bulgarian officials deny the charge, but have found the old suspicion a barrier to winning international respect for their nation.

At the moment, one lone Bulgarian student is laboring away on the translation and indexing of the huge volumes at the Library of Congress in Washington.

Weinstein said the Bulgarians promised him 127 volumes of files, and as far as he knows, he got the whole thing-"tens of thousands of pages."

"We've looked at several thousand pages but certainly haven't translated everything," he said. "We're not anywhere near finished. We ran out of money.

"What we have read so far is not adequate to come to any judgment or conclusions."

But even new funds might not settle the issue, he said, adding that the Bulgarians themselves have indicated that the files might not be complete.

A Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca is serving a life sentence in Italy for firing the shot that seriously wounded the pope. Agca testified that the Bulgarian secret police hired him to try to kill the pope, apparently under the guidance of the KGB, the Soviet secret police, who feared the pope's support for Poland's Solidarity movement.

But Agca's testimony was rife with contradictions. Italian courts acquitted three Bulgarians and two other Turks of conspiracy charges.

And the Bulgarians said the allegations about their role was a CIA plot.